


let's conspire to ignite

by theatrythms



Series: i guess that this must be the place [2]
Category: DC Animated Universe (Timmverse), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, F/M, Family, Family Reunions, Fluff and Angst, Getting Back Together, Season 3 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 07:25:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17720726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theatrythms/pseuds/theatrythms
Summary: To the international crime community, Cheshire is dead; caught in the middle of a shoot-out in a loading bay.To Will Harper, it means his estranged wife is living with him again.





	let's conspire to ignite

**Author's Note:**

> this basically started out as a 'what if jade went to one of the playgroups' and then i was like fuck i need context for how that happened and here we are , 11k words later . also id like to thank nebulastucky for my life and for beta reading this even tho it is 11k words long  
> the playlist for writing this was rlly interesting tbh  
> warm blood - carly rae jepsen  
> everywhere - Fleetwood Mac  
> starlight - muse (title comes from this song)  
> almost (sweet music) - hozier  
> here you come again - Dolly Parton  
> sunflower - post Malone ft swae lee  
> when I needed you - carly rae jepsen  
> please enjoy!!!!!!!  
> there’s also a big fuck-off spiderverse reference here bc id just seen the movie for the third time !!!  
> edit : 3/7/2019 : season 3 what the fuck

Well, he was right.

It is a lot warmer inside.

As soon as Jade passes through the threshold, the house feels comfortably lived in, but completely foreign, from the mugs on the drying rack to the girl floating above the couch. It’s a far cry from the empty house he’d shown her a year and a half ago, with matching furniture and matching sofa cushions, that goes well with the curtains.

In total, Jade spent less than three weeks in the house before pulling out, something nauseating about the porch and the hardwood floors and the bedrooms he wanted to fill. She hasn’t been back since.

(Aside from the occasional aerial views, her angles for all around the house plotted out neatly, the tree in the neighbor’s garden the perfect vantage point into Lian’s room, and the corner with her bookshelf. Artemis has a box bedroom big enough to fill what little she took from Palo Alto, and Will takes the master bedroom, gazing out onto a perfect suburb.)

She’d been dead set on walking away, saying goodbye indefinitely and hiding out somewhere to heal and lick her wounds, not sneak into her husband’s home in the middle of the night, slinking around a house that once belonged to her, and the silly notions of potential he always had for her.

Dead set on getting on the first flight to Europe for a while.

Until Jade heard through her channels that apparently, Cheshire is dead. Killed in the same altercation that left her arm in a sling.

And that might have changed things.

-

“Heya sis, mind scooching over?”

“Jade?!” Artemis’ hiss is full of shock, disbelief making a deep crease in her brow. “What are you doing? Why are you in my bed?”

Jade slides under the orange sheets, shoulder creaking as she settles in. “Oh come on, it’s just like old times, back when we shared a room and we’d have sleepovers.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” Artemis flicks on the small, shabby light next to her bed, the room filled with a low glow, and Jade can see all the tired lines on her sister’s face. Outside of the Tigress uniform, she’s different, more tense and all her joints seem sewn together. “Why are you here?”

“The world thinks I’m dead. Well, the Shadows and their partners believe, Cheshire died in our little rendezvous. I ditched that team as soon as we left and they haven’t seen me since.” Jade actually laughs. “As if getting sepsis would kill me.”

Even Artemis catches on to that. “Almost pathetic for you sis, you’re losing your touch.”

“Figured I’d take advantage of that, wait and see what happens, bide my time a bit, and get some rest for once.” Almost to exaggerate that, she lets out a big, fake yawn and turns over on her side, away from Artemis’ questioning glare.

“Then why come here? Why not one of your safehouses?”

“And run the risk of exposing myself?” Jade shifts around again, sitting up properly, so Artemis can see her in all she is; tired, barely twenty six years old, dead to the world now. “You and Will are the only people who know I’m alive. I need to keep it that way to avoid getting caught.”

“Are you being followed by someone? Because you can’t just show up here if you’ve got an active hit out for you-”

“It’s more for dad.” She even sounds spiteful when she says it. “Okay? He doesn’t realize how much he needs me, a few weeks off mode will help humble him a bit.” Jade’s smile is coy, with just a twinge of unabashed mirth in there for good measure. “You get it, right?”

“Well when I faked my death, it was to take down the Light and save the world, when you do it, it’s to make our dad annoyed.” Artemis sighs exasperatedly, shaking her head. If it wasn’t two in the morning, and there wasn’t a toddler asleep next door, Jade knows Artemis would’ve started her shouting right around now. Tonight, it’s a weak sigh, disappointed but not at all surprised. “Jade, you are unbelievable.”

Jade goes back under the covers, basking in her victory for the moment. Artemis shifts beside her, not comfortable enough to continue her original tirade, but happy enough to ask Jade a question that stops her in her tracks.

“Why are you in my bed then? Why not… I don’t know, your husband's?” Artemis offers, the words clearly never said before, too big for her mouth and too awkward to say.

  
She’d considered it, knowing from history that Will would just let her in and not ask any questions. He’d put an arm around her and she’d push it off, only to wake up against his chest, his blue eyes already open and looking at her.

(Jade misses those mornings, always felt nice to start the day with someone who loved you.)

She’d even gone as far as standing at his door, chewing her lip and fiddling with the sling. Most times, he wouldn’t mind, but it had killed Jade to make sure he knew she wasn’t coming back, and for now, in the dark instead of the light of day, it’s easier to ignore the feeling that he always knew her best.

“Jeez sis, way to make it sound so biblical. Even our parents didn’t share a bed.”

Artemis laughs lightly, sounding more like a scoff than anything genuine. “I don’t think they knew how to. I don’t think I ever saw them act remotely affectionate to one another.”

“Is that why I always found you making out with your boyfriend?”

It’s a ridiculously low blow, one that turns the words into ash in her mouth, regretting even mentioning it at all. Jade doesn’t like questions about her marriage so she got mean, and bitter, and brought up Wally West as if that was acceptable payback.

“Mostly.” Artemis says back, voice quieter, but much, much stronger than Jade ever remembers it being whenever anyone mentioned Wally. “But unlike our parents, me and Wally were actually in love, and not some crime marriage of convenience.” Even in the dark, she can still see her baby sister’s bright eyes, but no tears or frown. Instead she’s smiling, almost enamored. “Still are, honestly.”

If Jade was a stronger woman, she would’ve said something after. Something an older sister would say, deserving of her sister and daughter and husband’s love.

But she’s not, and she pretends to fall asleep.

-

Even in a different bed, she still wakes up to his steely gaze.

“Didn’t know we had a house guest.” He states, and frowns, thick arms crossed over his chest.

“Oh, you know what they say, cats drag in all sorts of curious trinkets.” She covers, rather than being caught off guard, as if this is all part of the game they play.

“Funny, didn’t realize cats brought my wife with them.”

Now that catches Jade off guard, how boldly present he is. She can’t help but wonder does he use that sort of phrasing around Lian.

“I noticed the dog on the way in.” Jade quips, and her stomach churns when she thinks about explaining this all to him. She can only curse to herself and ask why the hell she thought this was a good idea. “Listen, Red, I-”

“Artemis already told me.” He sounds dismissive but she knows he isn’t. He just sounds tired, a little wary, and reminds Jade of how she was, when it was just her and Lian, until she knew Will was stable enough to be near a child. “And, I don’t mind that you’re here, as long as Lian is safe and you’re safe.”

It only slightly stuns her, but she knows he’s too much in the habit of never knowing how to say no to her.

(A mutual issue, it seems.)

“Don’t worry, I’ll be out of your hair before you know it.”

“Just,” Will takes a breath, more nervous than she’s used to seeing him, but that might be an end result of his new softer side. “If you’re gonna come and go for the rest of her childhood, don’t give her false hope.”

The request is hardly unreasonable. Distantly, when she was a child she remembers her mother saying something along the same lines, hiding in the contours of their family apartment.

“You’ve been talking to my mom then?” Is the nearest he’ll get to her answer.

Will shrugs, leaning against the doorway. “We drop by when we can.”

Their conversations always seem to hit a time limit now, nothing of substance and all empty-threats and cool rebuttals.

It’s like the start of their relationship, in a way. Only that was exciting. For Jade, talking to her husband now brings the same pleasure as swallowing glass.

(Distantly, it’s because Will grew up when they found Roy and Jade feels as if something stunted her.)

Will turns to walk away, already halfway down the hall and Jade stops biting her tongue to yell down.

“I’ll be careful, by the way.” And she doesn’t wait around for his response.

-

With Lian, it’s like she never left.

Part of her was expecting, and hoping, that Lian would pull a face and ignore her and play strange the same way as every baby Jade has ever met.

Instead she pulls her arms around her ankles, rests her head on Jade’s pressed knees and laughs, high and light and like she did when Jade left her. Lian presses wet, baby kisses against Jade’s cheek and it’s a bit overwhelming for a second, with Artemis’ tentative face peeking over her dinner, and the anxious softness of Will.

The closest thing to a family dinner they’ve had since the West kid died.

The back porch of the house is the best place for Jade to escape to. She first has to peel her three year old off her lap and ignores the weird glances that follow her outside.

But she has to be alone for this, when she takes off her sling and gets to changing the gauze around her shoulder, something she doubts Lian would want to see.

Squeals of joy in the middle of a mission she’d forget is one thing, but Jade distinctly remembers getting up for a glass of water in the middle of the night, a year or so before Artemis arrived and finding Paula Crock (back then, of course. Nguyen is a new thing) creeping into the house after a hit, weak and uneasy and stained with blood. Seeing her pass out on the couch set Jade up to have little expectations for her mother. Then it was Jade’s job to set and clean the various scars and scrapes and cuts her parents got on their raids and Artemis was young enough to work as her assistant.

And then all that disappointment paid off the day mom got sent to prison and dad didn’t even blink.

(There was a time they helped each other. When the big plastic box under the sink came out, Jade knew something was wrong. They dressed the scrapes and stitched the deeper wounds, and it's probably the closest display of affection, the closest sign of love that she ever saw from her parents.)

“Need any help?” Will almost coos from the slip of light.

“No.” Jade mutters behind the sting of the antiseptic.

He moves closer, filling the light and obscuring her view of the wound, the stitches opening like waking flowers. “You sure?” He laughs quietly with a weird force to it. “It’ll be like old times?”

“I think you’ll remember that I was the one patching you up, Red.” As she’s finishing, he sits on the step under her, so Will is looking up and Jade is looking down.

“I may not take bullets out anymore, but I do have some cute Hello Kitty band-aids Lian likes.” He even pulls them up for her to see the bows and the cat faces.

The question wavers before it finally gets out. “Does she need them a lot?”

Will leans back on his elbows, mulling on her inquiry with thought. “Normally just scraped knees sometimes.”

Jade just nods, mumbling with a weird wash of relief painting her sigh. “Good to know.”

“She’s better at running now, so we don’t need them as much anymore. She knows how to slow down instead of running off as soon as you look away. We kept pillows around the sitting room for awhile so she wouldn’t whack her head off of everything...”

She leans into his words, his smooth tone taking over, and before Jade even knows it, he’s redone the stitches, replaced her bandage, clean and secure and not too tight against her skin.

Just like it was before. And after he was done he’d kiss the delicate wrapping and she’d kiss his.

(Of course this is where the similarity with her parents ends. Sometimes, dad would cup a scarred cheek, and sometimes mom’s fingertips would brush against calloused palms.)

(The Crock-Nyugen sisters were always their own kind of touch-starved and therefore made the worst kind of girlfriends.)

They sit in the Autumn evening, a wedge as big as eleven months pulled up between them, hulking and ugly and mangled, and she’d expect him to point fingers, or get mean the way he used to, and say things he didn’t always exactly mean but he hasn’t.

He hasn’t done that in a long, long time.

-

Paula Crock rolls into the Harper household like this is familiar ground, assisted by Artemis and Lian sitting on her lap. Part of a routine and always in sync.

For the first time in years, all the women in their family gathered together, pulled back into this world like it was how it always was. One knowing look from grandmother gets Lian hopping off the wheelchair and upstairs to her own room, but only after kissing her cheek to say goodbye.

“You’re home.” Mom says, and looks at Jade with her own eyes, dark and stormy, but older. Vietnamese is always the natural go-between for them, easier to be honest with each other, but English is where the lies hide.

“If you’re gonna yell at me for-”

“I assume Artemis has done that enough.” There’s a tiredness to her mother, wary in a way that disconnects Jade from the woman who raised her and the women in front of her now. “You know you’re on borrowed time with the Shadows, you’re smart.”

“I know that, mom.” Jade rolls her eyes. The time spent with Lian and Roy after the Reach Invasion was full of mystery letters, calls from unregistered numbers and packages showing up at safehouses.

“Do you?” Paula falls into Vietnamese, and all her features shift, like Jade is a child again getting yelled at for being reckless on a mission. “Do you really?!”

(Jade remembers very little of Huntress but sometimes she overflows into her mother, two sides of the same coin.)

Artemis mutters something under her breath, irritation spilling over. “This fucking family.”

“Ah-ah!” Mom points, turning to her younger daughter. “You’ve done this too!”

Artemis even has the gall to look offended, back to Vietnamese like a lightswitch.“It’s been two years! I thought we were over that!”

“Maybe dad was right,” Jade bites, and she can’t even keep track of what language she’s in. English sometimes is the only medium that lets her father speak through them. “Me and Artemis don’t have our heads screwed on right.”

“You both are smart but you can be foolish.” Paula bites, and this is when Jade notices the rings of silver in her eyes, and how tightly she’s wound herself up with her high shoulders and clenched fist. “Do you even know, how it felt for me, when they told me what happened to Artemis? Do you know what that’s like to hear your daughter is dead? Only for it to happen again, two years later?”

The silence is everywhere, caught in Jade’s chest and right through her heart.

“I have never made the right decisions. But against all of that.” Mom looks up, and sees her daughters, so different and still the same, all grown up in front of her. “You girls are the only things that matter to me.”

Artemis moves first, kneeling next to the chair so their mother can run her hands through her hair, hold her face and press kisses along her hairline. Jade goes second, more slowly, holds her hand, while her mother reaches forward to the sling, along the hard fabric and rubs, gently, at the wound underneath, like everything is how it once was.

(Crock women; definition; scarred and traumatised and still grieving; one’s freedom, one’s lover, all the potential one ruined for herself.)

-  
It’s in Jade’s nature to infiltrate spaces and take control if she wants to. Half of the time, it’s new clients, lower circles in the Shadows, and excuses her father calls lackies to help him out.

One week into the Harper Home, Jade’s already given herself a key, the authority to answer the door, and the right to dictate what they have for dinner. And the rest just wordlessly agree.

Even Lian, but she just likes resting on Jade’s hip when she goes between the chicken and the rice for the green curry, stringing together baby sentences in Vietnamese that Jade hasn’t heard since their mother tried teaching Artemis all those years ago.

(There is of course, a six year gap in Artemis’ language skills, and a three year gap where Artemis didn’t live with or know anyone who could even pronounce anything Vietnamese, whereas Jade would hardly say English is her first language and more of a skill passed down from her father, like forging signatures and knife throwing and his quick temper.)

She hasn’t left the house yet, beside checking mail and sitting on the back porch while the dog runs himself tired. One morning, when the house is empty and she’s cleaned around the sitting room as discreetly as she can, seeing Roy Harper sitting on her porch is a slight shock to the system.

Well, not her Roy Harper. The real Roy Harper that almost destroyed her marriage until she destroyed it for herself.

“Heya, Cheshire.” It’s still his voice though. If Will looks twenty five, then this Roy only looks seventeen, still lithe and young, with puppy fat clinging to his cheek bones. “Remember me?”

“Vaguely.” Jade drawls. Will and Roy had strange friendship, one she’d only witnessed a handful of times, but it still meant Lian had an Uncle Roy when she grew out of her phase of addressing the young man as ‘dada.’ The trip back from Tibet was agonizing with a comatose teenager, even more so when Oliver Queen arrived in a Waynetech plane.

(Green Arrow’s eyes went from Roy, to Will, to Jade, to Lian, back to Jade and Will, and finally it clicked for him.)

“No love for me, Chesh?”

“Not really, you were a real pain for a few years there.”

“When Will said you were back I didn’t believe him.” Roy’s eyes were prodding, looping around her sling and over her face. “Heard you were dead.”

This is a new development. “How so?”

“Sources.”

Jade cocks her head, curious, but also considering demanding what he exactly means. “You’re using Shadows channels for your suicide mission.”

This pulls Roy’s anger right out of him, his entire body tensing in response. “It’s not a suicide mission it’s-”

“Vengeance. Revenge. Justice.”

“I lost eight years of my life because of Lex fucking Luthor-”

Jade raises her hand to stop him.“And we saved you. Don’t waste what we did.” She sends him a ruthless smile, not exactly unkind, but this is what cut a divide between Roy and Will a few weeks before she left. Will trying to talk him out of wasting his life on a dead end goal, and letting it fester and rot as his life goes on without him.

(There’s also that part of Will that misses Wally, and sees Roy throwing away a second chance another young man should have. And with all of her sister’s despair, she can’t help but agree. Wally would be well into a chemistry career and maybe living with them in Star City too, and in the faded look in Artemis’ eyes, she’s imaging how well Wally would slot into everything.)

“You need to move on and do something productive with your life, and stop chasing someone that can’t be caught.” She continues, turning to head back inside.

“You still helped Will find me. Even the League gave up on me.” He wavers for a second, eyes darting around wildly. “I never said thank you for that. Thank you to you, I mean.”

“I helped Will find you because I didn’t want my real, living daughter being overshadowed by a lost cause in her father’s life; don’t think for a second I did it for you.” The words are more cutting than she intends them to be, mean in a way she hasn’t been in a long time, but she pulled every favor, every hint and bounty she owed and was owed to get whatever information she needed. She went as far as going to her mom and dad, with their own debts to collect, and together with her parents put together a trail that led to a frozen fifteen year old in Tibet.

(“I’m only helping to see what you can do for me.” Lawrence Crock had said, looking too big in their small Gotham apartment, leaning back in his chair and the laptop balancing dangerously on his knee. “Not to help your boyfriend.”

“Husband now,” Her mother quipped, on the opposite end of her table. “Jade was sensible and got married first.”

A ghost of a smile wafted over his face. “Jade having sense, that’s a new one. At least we have one daughter with a head on her shoulders. She’s in college, but Jade’s the one that got knocked up.”

“And here’s you thinking they’d both be dead by eighteen.” Paula hummed, sharing a pointed look with her ex-husband.

“But look how proud of them I am!”)

“I know,” he shrugs. “I was just wondering if you knew anything. I mean, I clearly have information the Shadows want to know.” It’s a sly grin, one that, in all their years of working to find Speedy, she never saw on Will. There was always a gentleness imbedded in him, sweet around his eyes, maybe pre-programmed into him despite the anger and bitterness they gave him too.

Jade opens her mouth to retort, fists clenched and shoulder aching before she starts spitting fire, until Roy relents, hands up. “Not that I’d actually do anything with it. Lian and Will are too… important to me, to mess with, or put in danger.”

It surprises Jade, how relieved she is to hear that. Causes a weird stirring in her chest that starts spinning slowly, until it blooms and blossoms and she’s almost grateful, to the smug asshole sitting on her porch.

(Almost.)

“I’ll do what I can to keep you… being alive, off mode for as long as I can.”

“Sportsmaster hasn’t said anything?”

“Not that I know of.”

Another minute of silence, before she relents, kicking herself in the process. “I might - might - have some stuff you would find interesting.” Jade manages to smooth it over, so it sounds less like a peace offering, or falling for a trick.

One day, hopefully, Jade will stop sharing secrets for Harper men.

But that’s not today, because she invites Roy in and drags up her comm from the mug cupboard, the kettle hissing in the background.

-

There’s still one question on Jade’s mind, ever since she came through the door over two weeks ago.

She would’ve asked him on the porch, but there was a hard stinging behind her eyes and her throat felt too sore to speak.

Instead she thanked him for his work and curled into Artemis’ bed again, and pretended to be asleep when her little sister finally joined her.

And she’s had plenty of alone time in the house since that week. There’s a strict, well-kept schedule that the four of them all follow. Will goes to work, Artemis goes to work, Lian goes to preschool and Violet zetas to Happy Harbour for high school. Then around two o’clock Artemis brings Lian home and they wait for the rest of the house to trickle in.

It’s monotonous in a way Jade hates. But it’s nice to observe.

Will gets in at around five-thirty. At five-twenty-five, Jade hides in his ensuite until the telling sound of his bedroom door kicks her back into action, launching at the door to catch him off guard. She’s never been good idle, and scaring her estranged husband is the only entertainment she has. It’s almost nostalgic, a throwback to the days when he’d arrive at a safehouse and she’d already be there.

Instead she runs into Will, his shirt caught around his elbows, eyes peeking out from the baby blue buttons as he takes it off.

“Jeez Red, you’ve really let things go.” She snides, and notes that all over with the beard and the body and the smile that crinkles his eyes, he looks much older than the Roy she found two years ago in Star City, or the one she married four years ago.

“And you left a trail on your way in here.” His grin is teasing. “I guess we’re both letting things go.”

If she wasn’t so distracted, she’d say something either mean or annoying but instead her question slips out, right into the okay-easy-comfortable zone they’ve built around each other and pulling it apart instantly.

“How did Lian know who I was.”

A simple question really. But to them it’s slightly loaded and something neither of them have tried to open.

(It feels a bit like asking him how often he thought of her, how often he talked about her, how much Lian knows and how much Will would allow himself to say.)

But in true Red Arrow fashion, he knows how to answer it, always one step ahead of her thoughts before she even knows she what she wants. He pulls his shirt down over his chest, a sheepish grin creeping over his features.

“Well,” he says bashfully, and Jade thinks she’s never heard him like this. Making excuses like he’s a child caught with his hand in a cookie jar. “I just used the wedding album.”

That clicks somewhere. “The way I did?”

(“And how did she know I’m her father?” He’d asked on the way to Tibet, bouncing her against the altitude.

“Oh you know,” Jade’s grin was downright evil. “The wedding album.”

“Those pictures!?” Roy had almost yelled, not even the slightest concerned for the passengers around or the baby on his chest.

“There’s some nice ones.”

“Like the one of your sister and Wally dancing, yeah. That was nice. Us, drunk out of our minds signing a wedding book is not something you should show our daughter.”)

It’s hardly a wedding album. It’s a scrapbook of the closest Jade had got to normality in a long time. Her dress was stolen from a vintage shop and looped around her neck, beads hanging down her arms and ribbon crossed around her back, ending just above her ankles. When Will rested his hands on her hips, she could feel the warmth of his palms against the sequins and pearls.

But she didn’t think she’d have guests at her wedding. Oliver Queen and Wally stood at Roy’s shoulder, Artemis on her side and their mother right next to Jade when she walked down the aisle.

The wedding album is the collection of pictures taken on Paula Nguyen's disposable camera, held together with green and red ribbon and presented to them weeks later by Wally on a quick run to Star City from Palo Alto. There’s bad ones, blurry ones, most of them taken from a low angle, but they’re fun, and full of life, and the Jade and Roy Harper from four years ago look utterly in love.

Happy, almost.

But still, it’s a glimpse into the life they had when things were best. When marriage seemed easier than looking for a lost boy. When marriage was a good distraction for a while, long enough to hold him off the obsession and long enough for her to consider retirement. Or at least a change in allegiance.

(Sad, how after all that work, she’s the one that’s miserable.)

“Also,” he quips, shaking her out of all the running thoughts. “She’s smart remember? She remembers things better than most kids. You’ve only been gone since January.”

The silence draws longer and longer between them, tearing down the easy-awkward-alright atmosphere they’d built up, in between splitting Lian’s schedule with her baths and nighttime and after school reading.

“Why did you-”

“Better start dinner then,” Jade slips out before he finishes it, practically running away from all the confusion in his eyes.

It hurts to see, but it’s protection. Something that doesn’t push the envelope too wide so by the time she gets the sling off her and she’s able to bolt, he won’t have an answer he can’t stomach.

-

Bowhunter Security was a brainchild Jade had co-signed on the loan for.

(“I have one skill set, I never went to college, my CV has a five year gap and I’m the clone of a guy I hardly talk to.”

She’d laughed at that reasoning. “Assassin for hire is the only qualification you have.”

Will had sent her a pointed look in return, hardly amused. “Is there such a thing of being someone who does all that but works for good guys?”

A beat of silence past, a laugh coming undone behind Jade’s lips. “Like a superhero?”

Another glare, another high laugh, the window open and spreading the warm summer breeze through their apartment, easy in the early evening.

“Or, security guards, yknow, mall cops, celebrities and hotels. All that jazz.” She said casually, as she threw another card into the snap pile, and the way he ignored the two queen of clubs in a row just proved the idea had sunk in.)

“It’s basically our second child.” Will laughs at the quirks in her smile, folding the small set of blue shirts she got from the laundry.

She passes the four week mark the same time she pads from room to room collecting dirty clothes from the laundry baskets while he just hides his laughs behind his hand. She’s still sleeping in her sister’s room and the closest to him physically she’s come is when their elbows brush cooking dinner. But Artemis is in and out of the house recently with Violet, since getting caught up in Dick Grayson’s meta-human trafficking busts.

“I think my shoulder’s all fixed.” She says, unbuckling the sling gently, leaving it on the table.

“May I…?” He gestures to her shoulder, and steps closer, an inch more than she’s used to now.

“Sure,” Jade says, because when it really comes down to it, Will is the only person she’d trust with this.

Will moves closer again, hovering just next to her, fingers shifting against the fabric of Artemis’ hoodie. “Uh, Jade?”

“Yes?” There’s a light tease to her tone.

“You’re uh, gonna have to take the jumper off.” His face is slightly red, most of it hidden by his beard, but she knows him well enough to pick him apart.

“Jeez,” She shrugs, zipping the jacket off quickly, leaving her shoulder exposed in the forest green tank top. “God forbid, my husband asks me to take my top off.”

“Well, we’re not nineteen anymore.” Is all he says, unwrapping the bandage with a careful focus. “I can’t go around ripping your clothes off whenever I want.”

Now it’s her turn to be the flustered one.

“Anyway,” Will coughs, setting her at the chair opposite him. “You should drop by Bowhunter sometime, the team’s much bigger.”

While he checks the marks left from the stitches, he fills her in on all the happenings and office drama, like Miguel stealing sandwiches and Peter the IT guy getting engaged and the intern Miles getting caught singing while cleaning the cars. Gwen in admin has a band Will has seen once or twice but wouldn’t go again, Peni in the garage brings her dog to the office on Fridays. All the guys both on and off call. An entire well-oiled machine Jade’s never seen in action.

“I think you’d like to see how it’s doing, meet the guys and all.” It’s a tentative request, phrased casually as he washes his hands in the sink.

Without the sling, she reaches her arm up and stretches, still delicate and tender. “Maybe, I guess.”

The evening following, Jade sits Lian in the bath while she goes at her hair with a kitchen knife, almost hacking off chunks of thick, dark hair, until it’s less wild and and hanging at her collarbones, hopefully different enough that she can pass safely in public, for the first time in four weeks.

Bowhunter Security is in a large industrial estate near the docks, red brick wall and blue uniforms mulling about the cars. Jade takes one of Will’s shirts and fashions it over her jeans and tank top and as casually as she can, one saturday morning, is reintroduced to a team as Will’s wife, Lian hanging off her back.

“Do we work for her now?” is the only reaction from Miles.

“Oh please,” Jade says briskly, wordlessly swapping Lian for the clipboard. “You always did.”

(And that, is how Jade got her own office in Bowhunter, an unlimited supply of coffee from Will, and a master key to all the rooms.)

-

If Violet is afraid of her, she certainly doesn’t show it.

Instead she asks for help with homework, scribbling in her margins and getting eraser shavings on the kitchen table. Jade cracks when Violet asks about long division in algebra, and she finishes the equation in three minutes.

“You’re really smart!” Violet observes, coping the answer into her own script.

“I liked maths in high school.” Jade shrugs. She can easily imagine that high school in Happy Harbour is a different experience to inner city Gotham, but for the years Jade spent in formal education, it was easy. “Well, maths and english. I liked reading.”

“Still do,” Will says while he chops carrots. “How are you liking my collection?” He even grins, all shit-eating and tense.

“Well, all you read are crime novels and murder mysteries. Gonna kill me in my sleep?”

He laughs, throwing his head back, while Violet’s eyes dart between them, confused. “Tried that, remember?”

A tight warmth floods over, and she takes a tender tone, smile sliding like smooth honey. “Like you actually wanted to do it. You loved me then too.”

The sentence takes the whole room hostage. Except for Violet, who coos against the scratching of her pencil. Artemis sends a worried glance that Jade ignores, sending her own glare back. Will’s doing his best to carry on with the cooking, and Jade thinks if she spends another second caught in the tension she’ll flip out the window.

Instead she spins to face Violet, a bored expression on her face. “Got anymore sums for me?”

“Uhh, yes! Twenty three more!”

“See, this is why I dropped out of high school.”

-

“So, are you pretty much, out of the life?”

It’s the question Jade has been deflecting for the past two weeks, aggressively even. She’s already done Lian’s school runs and she gets a Bowhunter work phone and she takes Brucely on walks. Even wears her own clothes she bought herself and watches Netflix with Will at night.

(Still sleeps in Artemis’ room.)

Overall, it’s a situation no one wants to ask about.

Especially not Will. He’s just happy she’s here and doesn’t watch ahead on Call the Midwife all that much, and even when she does she doesn’t even spoil it for him.

The best part of everyone’s day is when Lian and Jade have their own time, Jade coaxing Vietnamese syllables so Lian can repeat them back, babbling away during her nighttime routine.

“She’s not much of a talker,” Will noted, after Lian said goodnight in about three times in two languages before turning over on her side to sleep. “So, it’s nice to hear her talk, even if she doesn’t say much.”

Jade shared and smile with him, and against their entire history together it felt like the most intimate thing they’d done.

“Do I look like I’m quitting the life.” Jade retorts instead of addressing it, the Cheshire mask sliding back into place.

“You’re helping me with the team training, not robbing a bank, or meta-human trafficking.” Artemis rolls her eyes, finishing the last of her coffee. “All set to go?”

“Humm,” she pats her thighs and hips down, checking for all concealed and exposed weapons. “No, this should be it, everything you and Dick said to bring.”

“I never should’ve told you Nightwing’s identity. Do you at least remember the team’s names?”

Jade sighs when they reach the door. “Violet is the one that lives with us but spends weekends in Happy Harbour, Brion is the prince, Tara is his sister, Victor is the robot and Forager is the non-Martian and non-Kryptonian alien. Am I right?”

Artemis swings open the door.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Will’s sounds urgent as he comes to the front door, alarmed enough to send Jade spinning, and her hand going to her sai. “I made lunch.” He smiles, two plastic lunch boxes held out in front of him. “One for you,” he hands to Artemis, turning on his heel to face Jade. “And one for you.”

“You can have my lunchbox, if you want mama.” Lian twists her fingers together in her shirt, her Vietnamese quicker and more polished that it was six weeks ago.

“Thank you baby,” Jade coos, rubbing the top of her head. “I promise to look after it.”

Artemis checks the vegetarian meal over. “Yeah, thanks Will, I’ll be sure to give some to Violet.”

“Yeah, thanks Will.” Jade says, and without thinking she leans up on her toes and kisses his cheek, closing the door before he even reacts.

Artemis needles her all the way to the zeta tubes. “Jade likes Will, Jade likes Will!”

Instead of tackling her sister, Jade channels her irritation into taking down the new team. It feels like eight years ago, in a way, dealing with a team of underskilled kids with a strive to impress.

“You’re team tried valiantly.” Jade says to Dick, stepping over a groaning Geoforce under her. “But not enough.”

Dick just sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Well, I was hoping to give them another real taste of fighting the Shadows is like, without actually, fighting the Shadows, so thanks for that.”

“No problem kiddo, I’d be up for it anytime.” She smiles brightly.

“I figured I should say that the League knows you’re alive now.”

“Well, I just assumed they always did.” Jade’s new hair length is easier to keep off her face in battle, but she’s taken to twirling the short ends around her fingers when she’s bored at work. “Once the martian knew I realised someone would’ve told the League.”

“That means the Shadows might know too.”

“I heard,” Jade clenches her fists, in the background Artemis is dividing up the lunch Will brought and Brion is responding to the alien’s clicks and clacks. “I heard about the immunity the Justice League offers. Anyone I can ask about it before I’m sent to some re-education camps.” She says it so casually, the word immunity rolling off her tongue like she’s taken the power away from it, so it means nothing and is nothing until she deems it is.

“The League don’t actually have any of those, you know that right?”

“You certainly aren’t up to date with your conspiracy theories.”

Even with the domino mask, Jade can tell he’s rolling his eyes, ferociously, at everything she’s said so far. “I can get the information you need. It’s a process that’s a bit of a pain in the hole, but I’m sure it should be covered for you.”

(Immunity is, the Justice League’s answer to Huntress and any other rogue and supervillain who needed to get away from the life. Sometimes there’s conditions, like jail time or a consensual mindsweep. After all, someone with nothing to hide would hardly say no.)

“What do I have to do?”

Dick becomes genuinely sincere, the same benign voice Jade had heard when she was staying with Artemis in the days and weeks after Wally died. “You just need to show them you’re willing to change.”

(Jade is not someone who thought motherhood had a place for her. Then Lian came and Jade has never tried so hard to be worth something, and better than something, in her whole, entire life.)

(Jade has known Nightwing’s real identity since his little brother’s funeral. When the news richoched around the world, that the new Robin had been lost in combat, both good and bad guys alike mourned. After all, everyone knew he was just a kid. Artemis came to find her, the way she always did when bad things happened, and cried and howled and screamed. Violence and war and betrayal were all things the life brought to them.

For Artemis, death was hardly in the equation.

And Robin was just a kid.

“You have to feel this, do you hear me?” Jade’s voice was always shaper in their mother tongue, rising like a viper around the shapes and vowels. “You can’t guilt yourself out of the hurt. It’s okay to fucking feel this.”

Grief is a lesson their father tried to teach them. He never got very far with Artemis. Instead, Jason Todd dying at the hands of the Joker was the only lesson she needed.

Jade just wants to know if Dick knows about what really happened.)

“Thanks, Dick,” She says, and knocks his shoulder, hard enough that he flinches.

“No problem, Jade.” He nods, and raises his fist to hit back until she catches it.

Jade’s dark eyes are trained on the ground. “There’s something you need to know, your whole family, needs to know.”

(There’s an understanding between the two of them. Jade has felt that anguish of losing a sibling, but known the relief that comes with knowing their still alive.)

-

Iris West-Allen’s house is decorated lovely for Christmas, all the trees wrapped in lights against the snow.

Barry is the first one to bring it up. “You know Will, when you asked about bringing a friend, I thought you meant one of Lian’s and not your ex-wife.”

“Eh-eh!” Jade scoffs, hitching Lian up her hip. “Wife. No ex. Wife.”

Iris shares a look with her husband, the sounds of the party going on behind them, members of the Justice League and family members alike all mingle.

“Well, you know us Iris,” Will’s santa hat is lopsided against the force of the Missouri snow and wind. “Always full of surprises.”

“Hi, Iris, Barry.” Artemis says from behind her sister and Will, suddenly looking a lot more fragile than Jade has seen her in months.

“Artemis,” Iris relaxes, and a shaky tombre to her voice. She almost looks relieved. “I’m so glad you could make it.”

Her sister just smiles, shrugging in her green turtleneck, hair tied back in her normal severe ponytail. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

There’s a mutilated relationship between Artemis and Wally’s family. It’s not that there’s no love there, there’s an abundance, but it’s overpowered by grief, and it ties them into a continuous, arduous cycle, one they’ll be stuck in for the next few years.

Jade senses Artemis’ sadness, the way she always could when they were children.

“What’s your beer like Iris? I’ve never been a wine person myself. And Lord knows there’s only one way I’m gonna survive this.” Jade says, almost crudely as Will takes her jacket and hands it to Bart, who comes back seconds later empty handed.

(It’s possible, for Jade to turn an entire room on just her. A room full of Leaguers and people she’s had hits on more times than anyone is aware of is almost an easy target, when everyone’s sad eyes are narrowing at Artemis, and the big, Wally-shaped space her sister brings with her everywhere, as if she fashioned the polar vortex herself.)

She pours cans out the window and into the fluffy snow outside the kitchen and sitting room window, down the sink when she pauses between checking Lian is doing alright and half-listening to Will’s jokes, and one time, into a plant pot, all the while making as light and as inappropriate conversations as necessary.

“So when they say he’s fast, is he really fast?” Jade waggles her eyebrows, turning Iris the colour of her hair, but drawing a laugh out of Lynn Stewart.

“Okay Jade, I think we should get you some water.” Lynn laughs, as Jade makes a holy show of herself walking out into the empty kitchen, the radio humming sweet Christmas dedications and regular updates on weather conditions.

“Thanks, Lynn.” Jade slurs out, wiping the back of her mouth clumsily.

“Drop the bull Jade, I know.” Lynn’s grin is teasing, and even though Jade isn’t hiding anything, it still sends a ripple of dread. “You know why, you’re,” She makes a drinking gesture, followed by tracing a fake curve of her stomach. “Y’know, pretending?”

It adds up too slowly in Jade’s head, but when it does, she can’t help but laugh. She stands straighter, affirming to the other woman that she is indeed completely sober, if not a bit too warm surrounded by so many new people. “Thought I was getting away with it.”

“You were, I just saw you ditch your cider in the plant in the hall. I did it once at a party when I was carrying Jennifer.” Lynn smiles ruefully. “How far along are you?”

“Oh? No, no, no, I’m not pregnant. I don’t think I’ve had sex with Will in exactly a year, a few days give or take.”

“Then why-”

“I don’t even drink myself. Will doesn’t--anymore that is--and Artemis hasn’t in the last two years, I think.”

There’s a very trusting aura around Lynn, probably made of the same good fibre that made her brother worthy of the Lanterns. If Jade is to surrender to the League, and join into this den of spandex and justice, she might as well try and make allies.

“League stuff, especially around Wally’s family, makes my sister nervous.” Jade slips onto the counter, poking through the cutlery draw beneath her. “She can’t stand the pity. Figured I’d give everyone a distraction for the night so she doesn’t have to get caught in the middle.”

(It had of course stung, when some of the other moms were tutting their tongue and shaking their head, muttering behind full glasses of red and white is she like that around Lian? Of course she isn’t, but Artemis’ comfort is the prime objective above all else. And anyway, Jade will raise her daughter to be less judgemental.)

“Huh.” Is all Lynn says, seemingly understanding. “Don’t you worry about how they’ll all think of you? Your Immunity hearing is in less than three months. You don’t think that could, I don’t know, jeopardize it?”

It is a fair question, and for a second Jade doubts if she’s gone overboard and in too deep. She hasn’t vomited or tried to steal another person’s husband. She’s been at worst, slightly invasive, slightly loud, another mask and persona and wall she puts up, a defensive mechanism embedded so long that Jade doesn’t know who to be in front of the League.

“I suppose,” Jade nods, fiddling with the larger knives in the West-Allen collection, long and sharp and far too blunt to do any sort of real damage. “But hey, that’s an issue I can worry about later, not now when my sister still sometimes cries when it snows too hard.”

(White was the last place she saw him, thin across a tundra and when the rest came back he didn’t, and Artemis has been trying to piece before and after together, but the puzzles aren’t even from the same set, and she doesn’t know her way around it.)

(Wally’s birthday was spent on a mission, all of Artemis’ grief and longing and loneliness thrown into another meta-human liberation mission in god knows where and god knows who for and it hurt that Jade didn’t even know how to break through to her.)

“Yknow, I have two girls.” Lynn says, sliding a thoughtful smile to Jade. “Same age difference as you and your own sister.”

“Always a fun time.” Three and a half years once stretched across them like the space between their beds at home. Now it’s more sinewy, tight and controlled and no more holding each other at an arm’s length.

(Artemis only needs to say the word and Jade can come running. It happened once, days after Artemis’ sixteenth birthday, just as the snow was turning to grey slush in January. Jade picked up on the second ring, and Artemis’ nerves were hopping down the phone.

“Can you take me to Planned Parenthood. I need an adult to sign off on the prescription for insurance reasons, and mom might get so freaked she’ll start walking again.”

“You’re not in trouble, are you?”

“What?! No- oh my god Jade no I just need to go on the pill.”

“Oh I knew that, just wanted to mess with you.”)

“I hope they look out for each other as much as you both do.”

“Our house was every girl for herself.” Jade says, absentmindedly, thinking of dad letting mom fall, thinking of dad pitting her and Artemis against each other, and how their mom just let it happen, thinking about leaving Artemis in the apartment with him, all those years ago.

Then again. Jade doubts that Lynn Stewart and Jefferson Pierce would raise their girls like that.

Lynn opens her mouth to speak, probably something thoughtful and wise, before the kitchen door swings open, Jade’s concerned husband on the other side.

“Are you alright? Iris said you’re not really doing great-”

“I’m fine, Red,” She holds her hand to his chest, only swaying slightly. “How’s Lian?”

“Sleeping, hit a major sugar crash with Dawn and Donny,” There’s a large bang in the background, followed by a collection of adults yelling. “They’re still awake, if you couldn’t tell.”

In that instance, Jade misses her daughter very much, the same ache she pushed down and down and down all through her time away, a pain that snatches of time at her bedroom window couldn’t cure. “Wanna go home?” She asks, leaning all of her weight against him.

He draws his hands around her hips and smiles at the sound of her voice curling around home, like it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted to hear. “Sure, I’ll grab Lian.”

“I’ll get Artemis.” Jade grins back.

Later that night, Jade pretends to nurse an early hangover while Artemis makes coffee. In a lot of ways, what Jade said was true; this house, and all of its domesticity is her home,

“Thanks.” Artemis says, handing her a cup.

“You made the coffee, shouldn’t I say thanks.”

“I know what you did.” Artemis sounds flushed. “At the party? Pretending to get drunk when you really weren’t.”

Jade covers quickly. “This hangover is very, very real.”

“You’ve done this before. The first time dad brought us to a Shadows meeting?” Artemis fidgets with the memory, picking at the hem of her Stanford shirt. “I got scared because of Deathstroke’s eyepatch and before dad could give out to me you asked him if he was a pirate and did he have any hidden treasure.”

“I wanted to make you laugh.” It’s a nonchalant admission. “You were five years old, for god's sake, he should’ve had more sense.”

“Do you ever look at Lian and hate what he did to us?” Artemis says quickly. “Sometimes, I look at her, and I see us because she looks so like you, and just wonder what the fuck he was thinking when he started training us.”

Jade grants her sister a little bit of honesty.

“I think about it all the time, sis.” Jade meets Artemis’ eyes, almost dark and rueful. “Why do you think I was gone for so long?”

(“You’re working for Sportsmaster now?!”

“Not my choice! Not my call!”)

(But last time it was.)

-

“Dad came here today.”

The sentence lingers between them, and the distance catches in the light of the kitchen. He sits on the couch with Lian curled up against his chest, the sounds of her soft exhales travelling to the window ledge Jade sits on.

“Really?”

“He has a job for me.” She tries to keep it light, almost easy.

The last time Sportsmaster showed up on her door, it was to cash in his favour.

This favour lasted over eleven months, spanning seven nations, one trip to deep space, and at least several run ins with the both tiers of the Justice League.

(“Done playing house?” He said from the front porch, watching with his deep, humorless smile, and clear grey eyes that darted out at her.

“You said that last time, you need better jokes.” Jade sniped, kicking the car door closed with her foot, juggling a collection of groceries, her car keys, and the key to her front door.)

“Lian wasn’t with me, so she didn’t see him or anything.”

Will hand runs through Lian’s messy hair, twisting the dark strands and undoing the braids Jade had put in for her that morning. He’s quiet for a while, the air growing stale as it drags on.

“I said no, by the way.”

The look of surprise on his face hurts at first, the way his lips part and his eyebrows go up. She’s seen that expression over and over again in their shared life; when she’d show up during his heists when he was in a tight spot, or when he’d find her at his apartment door, or all the times she closed the space between them to press their lips together. It’s only a more toned down version of the first time he laid eyes on his daughter, or when Speedy tumbled out of the frozen pod and into his arms.

It hurts at first, but then she remembers she’s given him a fair amount of reason to doubt her.

“Where are you going now?” He asks instead, and it gives Jade an insight into his thought processes the last six weeks, all the unsaid worries he’s been chasing in between living with her and being with her.

Jade scoffs before she can stop herself. She knows deep down it's because she’s afraid of this horrible, mangled fear buried deep down, that perhaps her father was right. Happy families don’t belong in the life and leaving the life isn’t in the clause. They tried, very hard, for a while, to function as this symbiotic unit where he wouldn’t ask where she went for jobs and she wouldn’t say anything.

It’s a fear Jade knows comes from her father. He was able to parent and run heists and join the Shadows, and in the process became the monster Jade still checks under beds and in closets for.

“I don’t really get it.” Jade says. “I really don’t get it at all.”

“All I asked was-”

“How the hell you let me stay. Or really, how you allowed me to stay, if you never trusted me.”

This gets his attention, blue eyes rising over to her. It seems like its a question he’s been anticipating, holding his breath everytime she opened her mouth.

“I’ve always trusted you Jade,” Will’s words are solemn. “Don’t forget that.”

(There’s a thousands hours there. Thousands of kisses and hundreds of life-threatening situations and dozens of bullets they took for each other.)

“I just wanted you home. For Lian.” He says simply, like it’s rehearsed and clear of holes and flaws. “Same way you helped me find Roy, so I could be there for her. You gave me a second chance when I didn’t deserve it.”

(It was a sad moment, when the midwife gave Lian to her, seconds old and red and so full of life, when she realised how badly she wished Will was there. Six months went on and she grew into her nose and red hair, and it’s conveniently the same time all of her threads on Roy Harper started to pull together.)

Will is the first to infiltrate the no-man’s land between them, wide as a chasm and deeper than the sea. When he gets to her, Will bends down in front of her, Lian still sleeping, obscure to the rest of this but still so central to it.

She can’t help but think there’s something familiar about this.

(One of them kneeling, extending an olive branch with his hair and her eyes, and an inherent goodness in their daughter neither of them can believe she got from them.)

“But I left you. Twice.” She bites, but it hardly leaves her mark.

“You had good reasons the first time.” He shrugs, but looks remorseful, as if he still hasn’t made peace with all of the desperate things he did during that search. “And I might not understand the other reasons, but I am willing to try.”

Sportsmaster brought a mission, but it was still her choice. There was something stifling about the house, and the mortgage and Lian’s school interviews. She saw an out, and couldn’t say yes fast enough.

It all tumbles out in front of him, all the shame boiling over, and the missions she took and the things she did, pulling her across the world and away from them. But Roy bought a house, and they bought a house together, and suddenly Jade didn’t want to live there.

But instead he smiles. “I figured it was something like that.”

There’s something incredibly easy about loving this version of Roy Harper. His anger and spite and tension has seemingly rolled away, shedding off as the years went on and on, leaving someone very sweet and kind, someone Jade hardly believes she deserves.

(“People like us don’t leave the life. Your mother and Artemis do. That’s just how it is little girl.”)

(She’d parted ways with Sportsmaster as March turned into April, the days growing longer with the weeks. She’d stayed low on the roof while Will tucked Lian in, unaware to the eyes watching them. Artemis still lived in Palo Alto, and the emptiness of the house was felt all around them, in each quiet shadow and every nook and cranny.)

“They’re better off without you.” Someone said, and that thought seemed to take root between her lungs and bloomed.)

(What scared her most was that the voice was her’s.)

Jade’s hand goes to Lian’s cheek, slightly flushed in the heat of the evening, and the long lashes kissing her skin. “I meant it, when I said you were both better off without me.” Her eyes meet his, and sometimes Jade feels like it’s the first time he looked at her, and only saw Sportsmaster and Shadows and all the wretched things that made up Cheshire.

“And I mean it when I said I need you.”

It’s hard to exhale, after all that time holding her breath.

Loving him is easy, she thinks. Allowing herself to be loved, is harder.

“I need you too.”

But when he closes the space between them and kisses her, sweeter than she remembers and softer than ever, Jade curls her fingers into the short strands at the back of his neck and smiles all the way through it.

-

Jade earns her immunity the same way most do. By switching sides just when things get heated.

“Is this the first time we’ve been on the same side?” Artemis’ emerald cowl is pulled up over her face, smiling as she dodges flying rocks and rivers of lava. “Gotta say, we’re pretty good together!”

“Dad trained us for a reason, sis.” Cheshire yells over the roar of the battle. “You just went off-mode.”

“Off-mode is better than on-mode, Chesh.” Kid Flash zips past, running circles around Artemis and the Light goons she’s been caught in the middle of. “But I guess good-guy Cheshire crashes the mode?”

“Don’t break your brain trying to add all of that up.” Nightwing says through the mindlink. “Team, say hi to Cheshire, she’s new.” Jade can’t see his smug grin, but she can hear it. The new team aren’t as familiar with her as the old one was, like Cheshire was a fairytale to teach new kids to be good and focused on missions, or else she’d jump out of the bushes and throw the whole thing off.

She’d heard of rumors of Deathstroke’s new partner, whisperings in between jobs, as meta-human trafficking reached crisis level. Princess Tara Markov laughs maniacally as she hurled earth through the League and the team, while the prince screams against the wind. It’s not the first place Jade would’ve gone, but she’s learnt that the Light don’t do anything predictable.

“I’m a business owner and mother before I’m part of any team, thank you very much.” Jade snarks back, dodging another wave of drone fire. “And I’d like to keep it that way.”

And after that, immunity feels like relief.

This is how to come alive again.

(Jade’s life is complicated. Leaving the life is surprisingly not as complicated. It’s just plans that will go on without her.)

It’s a narrow majority in favour of granting her clemency. It’s freedom with strings attached, surveillance, monthly reports, a solemn swear that she’s genuine, and a quick mind-sweep by Miss Martian, to get everything sorted.

“Can’t have a Speedy-is-a-clone incident.” She jokes, even if it makes the rest of the room crawl in their seats.

(“Feels a bit like someone’s got their hands in your hair.” Will said of his own experience with the martian’s touch. To emphasis it, he ran his fingers through her’s, starting at her forehead and ending at the back of her neck, the action easy and effortless but still affectionate.)

All M’gann finds are memories of her father, memories of Artemis, memories of the seconds after Lian was born, when that crushing, self-imposed loneliness vanished and they gave her her gift. The months when it was just her and Lian, and Jade could do no wrong in that little girl’s eyes.

New ones too, like playing with Lian, talking with Artemis late into the night, cooking with her mother and looking at Will.

Her wedding is cut in half by the invasion of Sportsmaster, one hand on her head and the other around her shoulder, pushing her into the soft earth time and time again. There’s the months when Artemis was dead and everything seemed to spiral, the months when Will’s drinking got bad, the vows she made as a child to never become like her mother, a fool pulled into a life of misery tied to a thankless man. The promises she made to never turn out like her father that she ended up breaking, just like Will’s heart.

But at the end of it, it’s always them that pulls them back to normal.

“Congratulations Jade Nguyen-Harper,” Green Arrow beams, but it’s more to make Lian in her arms laugh. “You’re free to go.”

Will makes time to thank his old mentor, before pulling his girls into his arms, and faintly it feels like getting married again, in all the ways that matters.

-

“Is this your first time here?” Jade calls to the man getting out of the zeta tube after her. In his fine, designer suit, the baby strapped to his chest is an obscure sight. It’s the half-cowl covering his face that’s the normal part.

“Thought it’d be a good idea.” Batman growls back, his hand resting protectively on the baby’s back.

“Iris makes it worthwhile.” She replies, pausing to lean forward to look at Damian, and his long eyelashes and thick dark hair. “He’s getting big. Must be a bit of handful.”

“He’s teething.” His monotonous tone is full of the exhaustion raising a child can bring.

Jade doesn’t know the specifics of the extraction mission of Batman’s missing sons. In some ways it was a major success, and the team returned with a little boy with clear blue eyes. In other ways, it was a major failure, according to Artemis, when Dick knocked the visor off of Red Hood and all he saw was his little brother underneath, older and scarred and a lot more mute.

(She however, maintains, that she only knew about the older brother. The baby was an added extra, that after landing in Star City, Artemis handed the baby over until Dick could get in contact with his adopted father.

“Another stray?”

“Another son of Batman.” Artemis shrugged.

“So why are you giving him to me.”

Artemis countered. “Well you’ve had a baby before.”

It’s a valid suggestion, so Jade doesn’t argue, instead held the baby closer, keeping his blanket more snug around him. “Well he is just so sweet. Must only be like, five, six months old. Seven tops but he doesn’t have that many teeth.”

Will made faces over her shoulder, wiggling his fingers. “Sort of makes you want to have another.”

“I guess,” She had mused, the thought repeated over and again, this time seeing her dark hair and his dark eyes in another baby, maybe a boy this time, almost like this one. “But Bowhunter needs to update it’s maternity leave policy first.”

His eyebrows knitted together. “Wait, Jade are you-”

Instead of answering him, she just went back inside, cooing at his small fingers and round cheeks until Will followed in.

“Jade, seriously do you mean that?”

“C’mon Jade you can’t just-”)

Jade just pats his back as a condolence. “Well,” She says simply, and starts the walk to the West-Allen house. “At least you’re not breastfeeding.”

Batman’s growl sounds a lot more like a yelp this time.

-

As it turns out, the domesticity Jade hid from for so long is her favourite part of her life.

She wakes up to her husband’s blue eyes and broad smile, her daughter’s laughter and her sister’s smile. She works in an office and she sometimes takes jobs in security and goes to her monthly reports and takes Lian to playgroup.

Jade’s favourite spot is still the back porch, in front of where Lian’s swing is and she can just watch the dog run around to lose steam.

Will joins her, in early spring evenings, and it feels like it’s in their early days and he’s too nervous to say anything. But this time it’s nice. It’s easy because she knows him, and because it’s early spring and the days are longer, sitting out on their back porch with his arm around his wife.

(There was a time when this level of domesticity would be frightening; throat-closing-up, dry-witty-remark, skipping all decoration and going straight to sex so she doesn’t have to endure the butterflies welling up in her stomach.)

But this is nice, she thinks, and wants him to know that.

Will’s smile just brightens, and he holds her tighter and tighter.

(This time she won’t let go.)

**Author's Note:**

> this was sort of hard to write bc i was like . i didnt want to say everything is sportsmasters fault and respect jades autonomy that she has showed countless times that she is Her Own Person first  
> but i wanted to make a point that like despite how complicated her life / her relationship w will / her father / her daughter is , its very uncomplicated how she comes back to their life . and also how faking her own death was a bit of an excuse and not taken all that seriously bc . its jade  
> i hoped you enjoyed !!!!!!!!!!!!! comments and kudos are always always loved <3


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